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Thursday, July 28, 2011

Awhile back, I was cruising through a scrap metal pile, and came across a fairly good shaped Pedestal Fan. You know - one of those that has a nice round base, and stands about 6 feet tall. This one was also 30" wide.

The place where I dug it out from was where the county and state road departments throw out their metal "trash", and anything metal they find on the road, dead. I THINK I know the reason it was in the pile.

I drug the thing home and plugged it in. The motor sounded good, but the blades just BARELY turned, so I set about tearing it apart. It was a good thing I started with the back cover....

When I pulled the three screws holding the cover, I figured that I had found the reason it was in the "dead" pile - there was a good sized capacitor, with the side blown out.

Now, I'm not one to let a thing like a little capacitor do me in, so I called the company (TPI), to see if I could get a replacement. I was routed through Customer Service, then Tech Support, and finally to a guy who "troubleshoots".

I told him the problem, he did some checking, and told me it was a "non-replaceable part". Not really believing him, I said thank you, and hung up. A few days later, I tried again. It was "Divine intervention" that I called over their lunch break, because Tech Support was "out to lunch". The switchboard lady sent me to someone named "Robin" in the "Parts Department".

It was amazing! Before I even finished my question, she told me "Yeah - we got a whole box of them things"! Even though I couldn't order it just then, I at least had a part number.

Well - "HAD" is right....

When it came time to actually order the thing, I couldn't find the paper with the number - or even the lady's name I talked to. So, there I was, back on the phone to "Customer Service", only to be told the thing didn't exist.

After a couple more days of searching for the elusive scrap of paper, I just called up TPI, and asked for "some lady in Parts".

Low and behold, Robin answered the phone. Three days, and $18 later, my non-existent capacitor arrived in the mail.

It took about 5 minutes to install the thing,then I made ready for the "test run". I was amazed at the wind this thing puts out! It was a really humid day outside, with temps in the high 80's - and not a breath of wind. Inside the barn, however, there was a nice breeze....

In fact, it was blowing so strong, it drowned out my voice telling you how nice it was having moving air inside the barn while it was hot and muggy outside the barn.

As I was working on a couple projects (while soaking up the nice "windstorm" from the fan), I couldn't help but wonder if the crew who got rid of the fan in the first place had ditched it because of being told the part wasn't available. They probably have a nice, new fan that cost the taxpayers $175 (or more), when they could have (albeit - unknown to them) fixed the old one.

At least there's air in the barn now....sure wish I would have fixed it about 3 months ago.....